Conventional yeast leavened doughs contain yeast, cereal flour, shortening, liquids, e.g. milk and water, and yeast food, along with optional ingredients such as salt, sugar, malt, milk solids and softeners, such as mono- and diglycerides. The yeast is grown by fermentation and the fermentation functions to provide the desired leavening, flavor and aroma. Unfortunately, these desired functions of the yeast fermentation do not occur at the same rate. For example, leavening is achieved by the carbon dioxide generated during fermentation and adequate leavening can be achieved in relatively short fermentation times. On the other hand, adequate flavor and aroma development are much slower. Thus, the total fermentation time to leaven the dough and develop the required flavor and aroma can be quite extended. After fermentation, the dough is "panned" and allowed to further leaven or "proof" to the desired loaf volume. The total of the fermentation and proofing times result in relatively long bread production times. In the "straight" dough method, all of the ingredients are mixed as a batch and fermentation is continued for about 3 hours. In the "sponge dough" method, a fermented "sponge" from a previous fermented batch is mixed with the dough ingredients, which are then fermented. A small portion from that fermented batch is returned as the sponge for another batch. However, even in this method, fermentation times of 2 hours or more are often required, and proofing times are 1 hour or more.
Even with these extended fermentation periods, a compromise is practiced in reaching a minimum level of flavor and aroma with the desired level of leavening. The flavor and aroma development during this period is quite minimal and those conventional processes are routinely criticized in that they produce "tasteless" baked products. This problem is even further accentuated with the more rapid processes, e.g. the continuous and semicontinuous processes. Thus, the extended fermentation periods for producing even minimum levels of flavor and aroma have caused difficulties in all of the processes for providing yeast leavened baked goods, and especially for the more rapid processes.
As a result, the art has tended to accept that the more rapid processes for manufactured baked goods will produce little flavor and the art has concentrated efforts on even more rapid leavening, even at the expense of yet further decreased flavor and aroma. To mitigate the decreasing amount of flavor and aroma, the art has proposed to add flavor agents to the dough. Notably among such compositions are those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,466,176; 3,466,177; 3,466,174; and 3,485,641. These flavoring compositions provide increased amounts of flavor and are based on fermenting yeast in whey, which may be deproteinized, and which also may contain lactic acid. A wide variety of yeasts and bacteria have been proposed for producing such flavor compositions, e.g. Saccharomyces cerevisiae (normal baker's yeast), Streptococcus lactis, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Lactobacillus delbrueckii, and Streptococcus cremoris, among others. While such added flavor compositions certainly improved these baked products, the flavor level is still quite low and is not comparable to full-flavored breads.
Further, the cost of such flavor compositions substantially increases ingredient costs of the dough and to that extent decreases the cost savings achieved by the rapid processes. Additionally, these flavor compositions do not produce the entire profile of the fully-developed yeast leavened breads in terms of flavor and aroma.
Accordingly, it would be of substantial benefit to the art to provide means of achieving adequately flavored breads in either shortened fermentation times, or full-flavored breads in conventional fermentation times.